


...and I feel fine

by yourcrookedheart



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Character Death, Gen, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23397745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: The world is always ending for someone.5 times the world ended—or didn't—seen through the eyes of different characters.
Relationships: Marina Andrieski/Anna, William "Penny" Adiyodi/Julia Wicker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12





	...and I feel fine

### 1\. April 25th 2017, the Darkling Woods, Fillory. Timeline 1.

It’s not the end of the world, exactly. 

Fillory and Earth will both keep on spinning. A little worse for wear, to be sure, worn thin by The Beast’s cruelty. But there will be survivors, and they will carry on in the way only humans can, past inconceivable loss and pain, not unlike little like determined bindweed plants that stubbornly dig their way through concrete. That, or cockroaches.

No, it’s not the end of the world. Just Jane’s failure to save it.

Jane realizes that in order to do what must be done, it is necessary for her to believe that the man in the gray suit is not her brother. How could he be? The hurricane crashing through Fillory, snapping the necks of bright-eyed heroes, in no way resembles the kind-hearted boy she used to know. 

Only occasionally, the moths swarming The Beast’s face will part the slightest bit and the light will filter through the foliage in a certain way, and Jane will no longer be able to fool herself that the creature’s eyes are anyone other than Martin’s. Electric blue with pure magic, but still Jane’s twin brother. Sweet, sweet Martin, who only ever wanted to belong somewhere, so desperate to remain in Fillory that he will stop at nothing to ensure it. 

Of course it’s Martin. Who else could it be? 

Quentin’s Coldwater’s death is not the end of the world, Jane has made sure of that. He will try again, in a universe where Fillory finds him under better circumstances. And Jane will try again, in a universe where Martin—her brother, always her brother—will still be a monster intent on destroying the world. 

She won’t let him. Fillory is hers to save, no matter whose eyes lie behind that sickening flutter of wings. 

And so she will fail, and try again. 

And try.

And try.

And try.

* * *

### 2\. June 16th 2017, Brakebills College, NYC, Earth. Timeline 23. 

It may as well be the end of the world.

Oh, Brakebills is still standing. Penny’s pretty sure it would take more than a psycho moth-killer to tear down these halls, protected by centuries of spells and Fogg’s inebriated but watchful eye. As far as he knows, the rest of the world is burning down to a crisp, but it was burning down long before they let in The Beast, so. Probably some survivors left out there, and if Penny had any family left he’d probably give a shit about that, but he doesn’t. 

What the fuck does it matter anyway. Julia’s still dead.

Julia’s dead. A relentless nausea pools in his gut— _dead dead dead_ —at the thought that someone so beautiful, so radiant and brilliant and heart-stopping could just cease to exist. 

He wishes the world had ended. At least then it’d be over. At least then reality would reflect what Penny feels inside: desolate, boundless emptiness. A massive black void rendered meaningless by her absence. Instead all he has is a wasteland of a school, an eerie silence in his head, and memories. 

He remembers her eyes most of all. Full of wonderment that first day at the entrance exam, crinkling with humor, bright with determination, sparking with righteous fury, wide with terror, blank with death. And always staring at him, just as he stared back.

And then there is the silence. At Brakebills, with only ghosts roaming the grounds and keeping him company, Penny can almost believe he really is the last person left on earth. The lack of voices fuels the isolation. No more of the babbling, the whining, the incessant self-involved twittering. Brakebills had muted a lot of it, but the hum had remained like static. Now even The Beast has abandoned him, probably to slaughter some more people in Fillory. End another world. Why not.

Some might say the world is carrying on. Outside of these walls, there’s lives left to live. 

Not here. Here, Julia is dead, and Penny’s world has ended. 

* * *

### 3\. February 12th 2020, Hell’s Kitchen, NYC, Earth. Timeline ???.

The world has ended many times.

Most people go their whole lives unaware of this fact. The world has ended before. It will end again. Somewhere, somewhen, the world is ending at this very moment. 

Stoppard has experienced a couple of these endings. 

You never forget your first, his mother always used to say, and true to her word, Stoppard never did. It was the first time he accompanied his mother on a trip to one of the alternate timelines, before the cinnabar got to her. 

He remembers the smell of charred flesh.

He remembers the empty streets.

He remembers the dazed eyes of the survivors. 

Most of all, he remembers his mother. How she picked her way through debris and bodies with a single-minded focus, looking for Alan Dubois’ notes on para-temporal displacements, which had been lost in a fire where they came from. All the while, she pointed out the aberrations in the space-time continuum to Stoppard himself, as if this was merely a geography school trip and they were observing rock formations, instead of a world which had been razed to the ground. Perhaps she’d seen too many world destroyed already. The novelty must have worn off, though for Stoppard it never has. 

Stoppard was fourteen the first time he saw the end of the world. Five months later, his mother was dying. 

Time doesn’t stop for anyone. She tried, for a while. Succeeded, for a while. And as she fought against the inevitable, in her eyes he saw what she’d never shown at the sight of all that devastation: fear. 

What most people don’t know: the world has ended many times. And yet. Stoppard has experienced the end of the world, and has seen his mother wasting away until she no longer resembled his mother at all, and what he’s learned is that there isn’t a lot of difference between the two at all.

Somewhere, blazing fire is burning a civilization to the ground. 

Somewhere, someone’s mother is dying. 

Time is a circle. 

The world will end again.

* * *

### 4\. February 12th 2020, New Jersey, Earth. Timeline 40.

The world is always ending.

It is what it is. Most people spend so much time worrying about all the things that can go wrong that they miss the moment it actually happens. The moment the plane starts to shake, the collision of a car in heavy traffic, the next icecap melting.

Marina used to be smarter than that. Her philosophy has always been simple. If you’re the cause of whatever bad shit is happening in your life, you can never be surprised. 

Or, more aptly: If you cause the end of the world, the end of the world can’t happen to you. 

Anna thinks that kind of approach to life is cynical, but Anna and Marina don’t see eye to eye on a couple of things. And yet Anna was the one who found a way into Oren’s mansion, who got the blueprints for the Nave Hotel, who promised Marina this entire shitshow of a plan could actually work. Meanwhile Marina was the one who didn’t see the cracks until it was too late. 

Some idiots saved the world, and Marina lost everything. How’s that for an apocalypse? 

This is why the world is inherently unfair. _This_ is why you break before you can get broken, and leave before you can get left. Because after everything, Anna left, and it’s so much worse than if the world had ended. Marina doesn’t give a shit about all those other people out there—she cares about Anna, and now Anna is gone. 

It’s too late now, anyway. The time for the Harmonic Convergence has passed, and there’s no way The Couple will be dumb enough to let their guard slip a second time. Marina has always hated the things she has no control over, yet here her life is unraveling before her eyes, with no way to stitch it all back together. And at the root of it all is the black seed of narcissism buried deep within her core that makes her willing to burn everything to the ground, all for the sake of greed. 

The world is always ending. But hopefully, by excising that part of her, next time it’ll be someone else doing the destroying.

* * *

### 5\. April 1st 2020, The Clock Barrens, Fillory. ~~Timeline 40~~.

It’s the end of the world. 

How many times has Jane feared this exact moment? Every time she would watch Martin claw his hand through Julia’s chest, or set fire to the ground beneath Alice’s feet, she would think: this is it. This was the moment he would turn around and crush Jane’s watch between his fingers and burn the entirety of Fillory to the ground, and there would be nothing Quentin, or Henry, or even Jane herself could do to stop him. 

And then, by miracle, they won, and Jane had no more reason to fear. Until the whispers came of a new King, brave and true, and the wicked creatures he vanquished in the dead of night. First Jane feared the Takers. Then, she learned to fear Fillory’s hero. 

He only visited her once, early on in his reign. He recognized her, and she recognized him—just as she recognized in his eyes the fire that had also burned in Martin. Except this time, she has no more pocket watches to save the day. 

Quentin Coldwater is dead. Martin is dead. Rupert will be, soon. With Fillory destroyed, there will be little left of Jane herself and the place she’s called home ever since she was a young girl. But Fillory will live on in the hearts of its people, in the stories they tell of the strange land and its wild, magical beauty, whereas what will remain of Jane and her brothers is only the tale of three shadowed figures, threatening the peace of this place. 

In the end, that will be the Chatwin legacy: two boys willing to destroy to get their heart’s desire, and a girl too weak to stop them.

In spite of her failure, Jane owes it to Fillory to stay and watch it burn, and to experience what she’s always known: that the end of the world is terribly lonely.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](%E2%80%9Cqueennsansa.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D)


End file.
